http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8322136/Quarter-of-RAF-trainee-pilots-to-be-sacked-in-defence-spending-cull.htmlDefence
Quarter of RAF trainee pilots to be sacked in defence spending cull
A quarter of RAF trainee pilots are to be sacked in a cost-cutting cull that threatens to leave the Armed Forces short of airmen, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Up to 20 trainee fast jet pilots, 30 helicopter pilots and 50 air transport pilots will be axed
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent 10:15PM GMT 13 Feb 2011
Up to 100 student pilots will be told the news on Tuesday with some of them only a few hours away from becoming fully qualified to fly fighters, helicopters and transport aircraft.
The cuts will mean the waste of an estimated £300million already paid for training the pilots, plus the cost of redundancies. The training of RAF pilots can cost up to £4million a man.
There are fears that the sackings will lead to a shortage of helicopter and transport pilots on the front line in Afghanistan.
Tomorrow, one in four of the 400 student pilots will be taken aside to be told their commissions have been terminated when Air Vice Marshal Mark Green, the head of RAF training, visits each of the three flying schools.
Up to 20 trainee fast jet pilots, 30 helicopter pilots and 50 air transport pilots will be axed, The Daily Telegraph understands.
Some pilots made a last-minute plea to RAF high command to give them a year’s sabbatical, while others have offered to take a drop in pay in order to qualify.
Many of them are astonished that they could be sacked just 30 or 40 flying hours short of getting their pilot’s wings. To qualify as a fighter pilot takes four years with 300 hours’ flying on various aircraft.
“We have spent the last four years of our lives training for this and they are just going to get rid of a huge amount of expertise overnight,” said one trainee.
“It’s a real kick in the teeth and I would be devastated if I was chosen for redundancy as this is something I have worked for my entire life, through school, air cadets and university.”
Some in the helicopter wing are just five or six sorties short of qualifying. “It feels like we are only numbers and nobody cares,” said a flight lieutenant helicopter pilot trainee. “This is madness as so much money has been spent on us. It’s a really hard pill to swallow.”
A fast jet flying officer, 24, said: “It just makes no sense to me. So much money has been invested in us yet it is simply being thrown away.”
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the RAF, warned that the cuts would leave the Air Force with a “black hole” of pilots in future years.
“If you don’t have a steady stream of youth, you will end up with a shortage of people,” he said.
Commander John Muxworthy, the chairman of the UK National Defence Association, said the defence cuts were now into the “seed corn” of the Services.
“Cutting these pilots is going to weaken our capabilities in anything to do with air operations, which will impact on every other RAF and Army element in Afghanistan. This is a step too far.”
The redundancies come despite fears that many veteran RAF pilots will leave within the next two years to take up airline jobs as the civilian aviation industry recovers from recession.
The RAF has an estimated 210 fully qualified fast jet pilots, more than 200 air transport or surveillance pilots and 220 helicopter pilots.
It says it needs fewer pilots because it has reduced its fleet of fighter aircraft through the axing of 66 Harrier jets. It is also likely to shrink the Tornado fleet by half, to 60. The number of Eurofighter Typhoons will remain at 160 once all the aircraft have been built.
It is expected that up to 20 pilots will be taken from the fast jet training wing at RAF Valley, 30 from helicopter training in RAF Shawbury and between 40 and 50 from air transport at RAF Cranwell. There is now speculation that one or more of the training bases could close.
The cuts are part of 5,000 redundancies being forced on the RAF after the defence review, which will reduce total personnel to 33,000 by 2015. Britain’s Armed Forces will be scaled back over the next decade, leaving it with fewer ships, aircraft and personnel. As well as the RAF redundancies, 7,000 jobs will go in the Army and 5,000 in the Royal Navy.
Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, said: “The harmful human impact of the Government’s defence plans is becoming clearer by the day. People will want a full explanation about why and how this decision has been taken and why it has leaked before the pilots themselves have been told.”
RAF chiefs argue that the redundancies are necessary because large numbers of fighter aircraft are being cut. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “The defence review has already made clear there will be a reduction in the number of assets and airframes across all three services. However, any reductions in the RAF will not affect operations in Afghanistan and priority areas of capability will not be compromised.”
The cuts come just weeks after private contractors started to scrap the £4 billion fleet of Nimrod MRA4 reconnaissance aircraft that had never flown. Defence chiefs warned the move would leave a “massive gap” in Britain’s security. But six of the nine aircraft have now been destroyed after the MoD ignored pleas to stop until a full risk appraisal was done.
